United Sends Paris-Bound Woman to San Francisco by Accident

Most of the boarding process is bad, or just flat-out broken. But you trust that once you're through security and on the plane, you can rest assured you'll end up at your destination—possibly annoyed by other passengers, but in the right place. For one woman flying from Newark to Paris, however, that wasn't the case, as she ended up in San Francisco, despite never having any plans to go there.

Every foreign traveler's nightmare came true for Lucie Bahetoukilae, a French woman who speaks no English. Despite the language barrier, Bahetoukilae told ABC7 she had a United Airlines boarding pass marked "Newark to Charles de Gaulle," and even had someone scan her pass at the listed gate. When she arrived at her seat, 22C, someone was already there, so a flight attendant allegedly checked her boarding pass and seated her elsewhere without further investigation.

Bahetoukilae's niece, Diane Miantsoko, told ABC7 that after Bahetoukilae arrived in San Francisco, she had to wait another 11 hours for a flight to take her to Paris, making the normally 7-hour journey a whopping 28 hours. Bahetoukilae said she didn't realize her gate had changed, and a simple announcement in French would have prevented the mixup.

When contacted for an explanation of how a passenger could board the wrong plane, United offered Condé Nast Traveler this statement:

"We deeply apologize to Ms. Bahetoukilae for this unacceptable experience. When she arrived in San Francisco we ensured she got on the next flight to Paris and refunded her ticket. Our customer care team has reached out to her directly to ensure we make this right. We are also working with our team in Newark to prevent this from happening again."

United provided no further comment on how Bahetoukilae was able to board the wrong flight, or if the matter was being investigated further.

Given the significant changes to airport security since 9/11, the mistake comes as a big surprise to more than just Bahetoukilae. Passengers endure extensive screening, and pilots sit behind locked doors, but somehow, she simply boarded a different flight without oversight. Even so little as spelling your name wrong could lead to you not being able to board a flight, which makes this incident all the more flummoxing.

The Department of Transportation doesn't have any data available on how frequently passengers board the wrong plane. The most famous case of anything similar happened back in 2014, when an Australian couple boarded a flight to San Salvador, El Salvador, rather than to Salvador, Brazil, in their quest to attend a game of the World Cup. That was the mistake of their travel agent, however, and not the airline. Far more frightening is the number of times pilots have flown into the wrong airport—an Associated Press report from 2014 counted more than 150 such occurrences since the early 1990s when a pilot landed at the wrong airport or began to land before realizing the mistake.

None of this excuses Bahetoukilae for not double-checking her route and airport code, but United's lax treatment in this case is far more concerning to the average flier—especially given the company's recent bad press around a passenger being violently dragged from a flight.